All language subtitles for Soviet Storm WWII in the East Series 1 9of9 The Battle of Kursk 1080p.eng

Summer 1943. After two years of
war, Hitler is no closer to
victory in the East,

And has suffered a devastating
defeat at Stalingrad.

Now the Germans have gathered
their strength For one last
massive offensive

Which will decide the
outcome of the war.

At first, the Soviets called it
the elephant because of a
drawing on its turret.

But soon they learned
its real name Tiger .

They d captured one
near Leningrad,

and brought it to a tank
testing facility for trials.

The results were alarming. The
Tiger s front armour was
impervious

to a Soviet T-34, even at a
range of just 200 metres.

Only heavy howitzers
could destroy this beast.

But that was on a firing range.

At a gloomy meeting
of the Stavka high command,

Marshall of Artillery
Nikolai Voronov told Stalin,

We have no guns able to
successfully fight against these
tanks

It was April 1943. Along
the entire front,

the Red Army prepared to meet
what they called "the summer
Germans".

In both the previous summers,

the Wehrmacht s blitzkkrieg
had proved almost unstoppable.

Now these new German
tanks caused fresh concern.

Would the Red Army once more be
swept aside by the German summer
offensive?

Soviet engineers worked
frantically on new tank and
antitank guns designs.

Few would be ready in time.

Meanwhile, the Stavka made plans
to meet the inevitable German
offensive.

All eyes were drawn
to the city of Kursk.

Here the Red Army s Central
Front occupied a large bulge, or
salient, in the frontline.

It was an obvious
place to attack.

The Soviet General Staff
expected the Germans to attack
simultaneously

from north and south, to cut off
the troops inside the salient.

To meet this threat, the Red
Army began to construct several
defensive lines

within the salient. The Stavka
planned to let the Germans wear
themselves out

attacking these defences, before
launching their own
counter-offensive.

Soviet intelligence was soon
able to confirm the Stavka s
intuition.

On 12th April 1943, Stalin was
handed secret German plans for
"Operation Citadel".

It was the codename for the
Wehrmacht s summer offensive in
the east.

The information came from an
agent codenamed Werther .

His real identity remains a
mystery, but it s assumed he was
an officer within OKW,

the German Armed
Forces High Command.

His reports were sent to Moscow
via Rudold Roessler,

who headed the Lucy Spy Ring
based in Switzerland.

The plans for Operation
Citadel exactly confirmed

what the Stavka had
already guessed.

The Germans planned to "pinch
out" the Kursk salient

with two simultaneous attacks.

They would be made by von
Kluge s Army Group Centre from
the north,

and by Manstein s Army
Group South in the south.

At the beginning of May, the
Stavka was able to warn its
commanders that:

According to our intelligence,
the enemy plans to attack along
the Orel-Kursk line,

the Belgorod-Oboyan line, or
along both lines
simultaneously.

In May, Hitler held a planning
meeting to discuss

the early phases of Operation
Citadel. However, many generals
voiced concern.

Field Marshal von Kluge,
commanding Army Group Centre,
openly opposed the Fuehrer.

General Model, meanwhile,
presented air reconnaissance
photos.

It was his Ninth Army that was
to assault the Kursk salient
from the north.

Model pointed to the signs of
heavy Soviet defences being
prepared in this sector.

Walter Model would earn the
nickname, "the Fuehrer s
fireman",

because later in the war,
he was frequently sent by Hitler

to try and salvage desperate
situations. Model was a fervent
Nazi,

renowned for his loyalty
to the Fuehrer. In 1945,

when his army group was
encircled by the Americans,

he shot himself rather
than face surrender.

Model was one of
a very small number of generals

whose opinion the
Fuehrer respected.

Model was known as a
genius of defence.

But he and his 9th Army had less
experience of large-scale
offensive actions.

Some thought that Model was
trying to get the entire
operation cancelled,

allowing him to fight a
defensive battle against the Red
Army.

Guderian was another who
expressed doubts about Operation
Citadel.

As Inspector-General
of Armoured Troops,

he knew that the panzer
divisions were not ready for
such a massive operation.

For him, the whole thing was
too much of a risk.

The war had already taken a
massive toll on the Wehrmacht.
If Citadel was a success,

it would allow them to retain
the initiative on the Eastern
front.

But if it failed, it
would be disastrous.

The Fuehrer agreed to postpone
the operation by one month,
declaring:

There can be no failure .

The delay would allow the
Germans to deploy more of their
latest armoured vehicles.

These included the heavy Tiger
tanks, the new Panzer V
Panthers,

and the massive Ferdinand
tank destroyers.

The Luftwaffe was also receiving
new ground attack aircraft,

such as a fighter-bomber
variant of the Focke-Wulf 190.

New variants of the Junkers 87
dive bomber were armed with two
37 millimetre cannon.

They fired tungsten-core
ammunition against the thin top
armour of Soviet tanks,

and proved to be
highly effective.

Squadrons of new Henschel
ground attack aircraft

were also arriving
in the Kursk area.

The HS-129 was also
a specialised tank-destroyer.

But the delay also gave the Red
Army more time to strengthen
their defences.

Three heavily fortified lines
were constructed, with
minefields,

trenches, and gun emplacements.

But the lack of effective
antitank guns was a still a
serious concern.

The Red Army hoped that new
defensive tactics would overcome
this shortcoming.

Previously anti-tank guns had
been distributed evenly along
the front.

But combat experience proved
they were more effective grouped
together.

Antitank strongpoints became the
foundation for the defence of
the Kursk salient.

Each strongpoint contained up to
20 antitank guns and dozens of
antitank rifles.

The guns were well entrenched
and covered all directions.

The distance between
neighbouring strongpoints was
600 to 800 metres.

If German tanks tried to pass
between two strong points,

they would expose their weaker
side armour to the Soviet
anti-tank guns.

It took many week of
backbreaking labour

to build the strongpoints
and anti-tank ditches.

Mikhail Badigin,
an antitank gunner, recalled,

We had to dig out
about 30 cubic metres of earth

to bed in a 45
millimetre antitank gun.

We did more digging than most
people will do in their entire
lives.

The Red Army dug 4,200 km of
trenches along the Voronezh
Front alone.

If they d been dug in a straight
line, they have stretched from
Moscow to Madrid.

The Central Front had dug
another five thousand km of
trenches.

2,000 km of roads were
built, 686 bridges,

and 300,000 wagon-loads
of supplies and equipment

were delivered to
the Kursk salient.

The Kursk salient was now the
most heavily fortified position

in the history of warfare.

Launched against it from the
south would be the 445,000 men

and 1,500 tanks of
Army Group South.

They faced the Voronezh Front
commanded by General Vatutin,

with 626,000 men
and 1,700 tanks.

In the north the attack would be
conducted by von Kluge s Army
Group Centre,

with 332,000 men
and 1,000 tanks.

Facing them, the Soviet Central
Front commanded by General
Rokossovsky,

with 712,000 men
and 1,800 tanks.

In addition, more Soviet troops
were gathered into a strategic
reserve

named the Steppe Front,
under General Ivan Konev.

Rokossovsky s situation in the
north was relatively strong.

He knew the German tank assault
would have to come from
somewhere

along a 90 kilometre
gap in the forests.

Vatutin s troops, however,
were on the wide open steppe.

There was nothing to restrict
the enemy s movement. They might
attack anywhere.

General Nikolai Vatutin was
considered one of the Red Army s
most talented commanders.

His peasant origins and
Communist fervour made him a
favourite of Joseph Stalin.

He was a theoretician, and
highly respected by his
adversaries.

German generals nicknamed
him the grand master .

Vatutin would not
survive the war.

He was killed in an ambush by
Ukrainian nationalists in
February 1944.

General Vatutin s Voronezh Front

was about to face one of the
most powerful military assaults
in history.

Vatutin, by nature an attacker,
would be called on to conduct

the greatest defensive
battle of all time.

As the Red Army prepared for
battle, the engineers got to
work.

A dense minefield was laid
around each strongpoint.

The second and third lines
weren t mined so heavily.

Instead, they were assigned
mobile engineer units in trucks
and horse-drawn wagons.

Their task was to lay
minefields on the fly

in the very path of
advancing enemy tanks.

A German General wrote,

The speed at which they could
lay a minefield was astonishing.

The Russians planted more than
30,000 mine in just two or three
days.

Meanwhile Red Army recruits were
being trained to overcome their
fear of tanks.

They were sent into trenches and
run over by their own tanks.

They called it "ironing".

They were also trained to throw
antitank grenades and Molotov
cocktails.

And in the evening they read
pamphlets on how to destroy
German tanks.

The Red Army scoured its
artillery units for the most
accurate gun-layers.

The best became anti-tank
gunners, with improved pay and
rations.

They trained hard, until they
could pick out the weak points
of a tank,

and score a bull s
eye on the gun.

Batteries of powerful 85mm
anti-aircraft guns were assigned
to key sectors,

with orders only to
engage enemy tanks.

Four regiments were armed with
German antitank guns captured at
Stalingrad.

The Red Army Air Force also
received new anti-tank weapons.

They had been attacking
with one big 50 kilogram bomb.

But it was difficult to score a
direct hit on a moving target
from the air.

The new bomblets
weighed only 1.5 kg,

but could penetrate up to
100 millimetres of armour.

Since tanks have much
thinner armour on top,

this was easily enough
to knock out any German panzer.

48 bomblets were packed
into one container.

A Sturmovik ground attack
aircraft could carry four such
containers.

It was enough to devastate an
entire tank column along a path
of 200 metres.

As the wait for the German
assault to begin dragged on,

some Soviet commanders
became increasingly uneasy.

Vatutin repeatedly urged
the Stavka to attack first.

We must seize the moment. he
said, The enemy is not
attacking.

Autumn is coming and all our
planning will have been in vain.

Let us stop digging
and launch our attack first.

But the response was
always the same. Wait.

Meanwhile, a German map was
recovered which accurately
plotted all Soviet positions

as spotted by their air
reconnaissance. Many Soviet
units were forced to move.

This time they paid more
attention to camouflage from the
air.

For the third time, the Stavka
issued a warning to the troops

that the German
attack was imminent.

But by now false alarms were
beginning to play on the nerves
of frontline troops.

Lev Malikin, a scout with the
222nd Guards Rifle Regiment,
wrote:

It was clearly believed that
the Germans would attack soon.

All units in our division
were on high alert.

We were ordered by
division intelligence

to take a German prisoner
for interrogation, at any cost.

That night they captured a
German engineer who d been
clearing mines in No Man s Land.

Under interrogation
he began to speak freely:

German troops have been put
on full alert, he told them.

They will begin to attack in
the direction of Kursk on 5th
July at 2 a.m.

European time. There will be an
additional assault from
Belgorod.

The hour was not far off.

The Red Army planned a nasty
surprise for the Germans.

Just as they massed
for the attack,

the Soviets would hit them with
a massive artillery bombardment.

The night sky was lit up with
the blast from hundreds of guns.

Not all of the German assembly
areas were guessed correctly.

But the deluge of shells
and rockets found many targets.

Other German units found it
impossible to advance into this
wall of fire.

Lieutenant Roshchenko, navigator
of an Ilyushin 4 bomber,
recalled:

From a long way off we could
see that something unimaginable

had begun along the frontline.
Both sides were firing
intensely.

As soon as the Soviet
guns fell silent,

the air was filled with the
scream of German shells.

This barrage was intended to
soften up Red Army defences
ahead of the assault.

The Scout Lev
Malikin remembered,

The sound of explosions made us
leap from our plank beds in our
dugouts,

grab our submachine-guns
and race into our trenches.

Fire, smoke and falling earth
were everywhere.

The enemy bombardment
lasted more than an hour.

At last it ended, and the
Hitlerites began their attack

under the cover
of smoke shells.

Tank divisions,
air fleets, infantry units

all the military might that had
been assembled around Kursk

over the course of several
months, was now set in motion.

The largest tank
engagement of all time,

and one of the greatest
battles in history, had begun.

July 1943. The long-awaited
German offensive at Kursk had
begun.

Radio-controlled
tankettes led the way,

sent ahead to clear paths
through the Soviet minefields.

Their heavy toothed metal
rollers detonated all the mines
in their path.

Others laid powerful
explosive charges

that could clear a large area
with a single blast.

These machines cleared the way
for the Ferdinand
tank-destroyers.

But it wasn t always easy to
spot the safe lane across a
field

churned up by
countless explosions.

Many Ferdinands lost their way,
and were disabled by anti-tank
mines.

By the end of the first day,
half of the mighty Ferdinands
were out of action.

Most had been immobilised by
damage to their tracks and
wheels.

In the south, heavy Soviet
shelling hampered German
attempts to clear the
minefields.

Many Tigers and Panthers
soon had their wheels

and tracks shattered
by anti-tank mines.

The Germans also ran into 500
kilometres of antitank ditches.

The ditches had to be collapsed
by accurate dive bomber attacks

before the tanks could pass.

The famous German blitzkrieg
had been reduced to a crawl.

German units became caught in a
labyrinth of Soviet defences.

As soon as they suppressed one
strongpoint, they came under
fire from its neighbour.

General Friedrich von Mellenthin
wrote: The Russians were
excellent at camouflage.

No minefield or antitank
strongpoint was detected

before the first tank
was blown up by a mine,

or the first Russian
antitank gun opened fire.

However, German experience and
firepower soon began to tell.

They began to concentrate all
their effort against a few
narrow sectors of the front.

German panzer units
attacked in a V-formation.

Its tip was formed
by the heavy Tiger tanks,

which took out Soviet
anti-tank guns at long range.

Medium and light tanks followed.

When the Germans had succeeded
in smashing a hole through the
defences,

they rushed to exploit it.

Army Group South was supported
by almost 400 aircraft on the
first day of the battle.

They rained bombs
onto the Soviet strongpoints.

They also bombed minefields to
clear lanes for the advancing
panzers.

It took 17 hours for the
elite 2nd SS panzer corps

to breach the first
line of Soviet defences.

General Vatutin responded by
sending in Katukov s 1st Tank
Army.

Katukov recalled a report from
one of his brigade commanders:

Burda began his report. The
enemy was attacking his position
incessantly,

from fifty to a hundred tanks at
a time. Tigers and Panthers came
first.

Dealing with them
is difficult, sir, he said.

You shoot at them, but the
shells only ricochet. So what s
the outcome?

Losses Terrible losses, sir.
About 60 percent of the
brigade.

A Soviet -34 tank had to get
within 500 metres of a Tiger,

and then fire at its
thin side armour.

The German Tigers and
Panthers, meanwhile,

could penetrate the -34 s front
armour from a range of 2
kilometres.

The huge losses sustained
by the 1st Tank Army

forced Katukov to share his
concerns with General Vatutin.

But there was no
change of orders.

As he prepared for another
suicidal assault, the phone rang
at his headquarters.

It was Stalin. He asked Katukov
to speak his mind about possible
courses of action.

Katukov proposed
digging in the tanks,

and letting the enemy come into
close range before opening fire.

Stalin was silent for a while
All right , he said at last.

You will stop the
counterattack.

Katukov s tanks took up
defensive positions alongside
the artillery and infantry.

But when General Kravchenko s
5th Stalingrad Guards Tank
Corps

was threatened with
encirclement, Colonel Nikoforov
arrived at his headquarters

with special orders
from the army commander.

He would shoot Kravchenko if he
did not order an immediate
counterattack.

Kravchenko s counterattack ran
straight into the heavy tanks of
two SS Panzer divisions.

With half his vehicles
destroyed, he was barely able to
fight his way out

of an encirclement
with the remnants of his corps.

Meanwhile in the
northern sector,

General Rokossovsky also ordered
an armoured counterattack.

On the second morning of the
battle, near the village of
Olkhovatka,

General Rodin s 2nd Tank Army
was ordered to attack.

The counterattack failed to
dislodge Model s panzer
divisions.

Later in the day, they attacked
one more through heavy
thunderstorms.

Advancing against powerful
and accurate German gunnery,

the Soviet tank divisions took
horrific losses in men and
machines.

But they did manage
to blunt Model s advance.

The 2nd Tank Army went
on the defensive.

When a fresh German panzer
division renewed the attack,

it ran straight into
the camouflaged Soviet tanks.

The ruined train station at
Ponyri became the focus of heavy
fighting.

The Germans gathered their
surviving Ferdinand and Brummär

self-propelled guns into a task
force, and attempted to storm
it.

German units managed to get
behind the Soviet troops holding
the station.

But now they found themselves in
one of the Red Army s
pre-prepared fire pockets .

It was here that
Sergeant Mikhail Fomin,

a gun-layer of the 159th
Guards Artillery Regiment,

was awarded the title Hero of
the Soviet Union, for destroying
7 tanks.

He continued firing
even when wounded.

The fire pocket was a tactic
used by Soviet anti-tank guns

working together to lure German
tanks into an ambush.

Some guns would act as bait,
opening fire at long range

and drawing the enemy
tanks towards them.

Once in range, camouflaged
anti-tank batteries on their
flanks would open fire.

At a range of just 200 to 300
metres, there was a good chance
of a kill.

Model s Ninth Army had failed to
achieve a breakthrough at either
Olkhovatka or Ponyri.

By the fifth day of the battle,

the northern offensive
was running out of steam.

Rokossovsky had accomplished his
task of exhausting the enemy.

Now it was time to
think of attack.

On the telephone to Stalin and
Zhukov, he was given the
date 12th July.

While the enemy had
been held in the north,

in the south the battle was
entering its most critical
phase.

Here the Germans had more room
for manoeuvre across the open
steppe.

And despite heavy tank losses,

they had broken through the
first two Soviet defensive
lines.

The Red Army rushed
reinforcements to the area of
the enemy breakthrough.

The Germans had 200 Panthers
at the start of the battle.

After five days of fighting,
they were down to just 16.

The new Soviet antitank aerial
bombs were an unpleasant
surprise for the Germans.

Just one hit could
destroy a tank.

But the Waffen SS panzer
divisions leading the charge
were experienced,

determined, and
tactically skillfull.

Strongpoint by strongpoint, they
fought their way into the heart
of the Soviet defences.

The breakthrough into open
country appeared imminent.

One Soviet operations
report stated:

The circumstances that allowed
the enemy s tanks to advance
were these:

as our tanks and trucks
retreated, they were pursued so
closely by the enemy,

that it was impossible to lay
anti-tank mines on the roads to
hold them up.

One Communist Youth member,

serving with the 287th Guards
Rifle Regiment, wrote later:

On the night of 11th July we
reached the Oktiabrsky
collective farm.

We were told: There will be
a battle tomorrow. Dig trenches.

They will be either your
fortress, or your grave.

To prevent a German
breakthrough,

the Stavka used its strategic
reserve to reinforce the
Voronezh Front.

More than 400 tanks,
hundreds of other vehicles

and thousands of infantry were
on the move through the arid
heat of the Russian steppe.

Boris Nazarov, the loader in a
self-propelled gun, recalled:

We were on the move
all night and all the next day.

We had all our hatch covers
open, but it was still
unbearably hot inside.

The commander forbad us
to lean out of the hatches,

so inside we were
practically naked.

Vatutin planned to use these
reserves to deliver his
long-awaited counter-attack.

General Rotmistrov s
5th Guards Tank Army

was due to take up positions
near the village of Prokhorovka.

This was to be the
base for its assault.

But the German 2nd SS Panzer
Corps had already reached
Prokhorovka.

Here they were poised to break
through the last Soviet
defences.

They had only been held here by
a miracle. As tanks of the SS
Panzer Division

Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler
had rushed forward,

they d been hit by enfilading
Soviet artillery fire

from the far bank
of the Psel River.

Concern about their exposed
flanks would delay the Germans
just long enough.

The Leibstandarte division
took up defensive positions,

waiting for the SS Division
Totenkopf to cross the Psel and
secure the flank.

Meanwhile Rotmistrov s 5th
Guards Tank Army was approaching
Prokhorovka.

The Soviet tanks maintained
strict radio silence.

Their approach remained
unknown to the Germans.

But when the sun rose,
German air reconnaissance

soon spotted the
multitude of vehicles,

and alerted their own troops
by shooting violet flares.

The 5th Guards Tank Army was due
to attack on a narrow front

between the Psel River
and the railway.

The front was further restricted
by an impassable ravine.

The Soviet tank brigades
would need to form up in columns

to attack through
this narrow gap.

Soviet tanks usually attacked
on masse across a wide front.

When an enemy gun fired, several
tanks immediately answered back.

Attacking on such a small
frontage would be a severe
handicap for the Soviets.

But there was no hope of
the orders being changed.

Shortly after dawn, the 5th
Guards Tank Army launched its
assault.

Hellmuth Becker, commanding a
regiment of the SS Division
Totenkopf, wrote:

I saw clouds of
dust on the horizon.

Soon, out of these clouds
Russian tanks began to appear.

The Russians have sent in their
reserve , I said to our chief of
staff,

and realized that we had
lost the battle of Kursk.

But events at Prokhorovka were
far from a foregone conclusion.

As the Soviet tanks rounded the
wide ravine, they were funnelled
into a narrow channel,

where they made easy targets
for the German gunners.

Tank after tank was hit,
bursting into flames

or being torn apart in
massive explosions.

Tank commander Briukhov
remembered: Tanks were ablaze
everywhere.

Powerful explosions sent 5-tonne
turrets flying 20 metres into
the air.

Some explosions were so powerful

that an entire tank was blown
into a pile of scrap metal.

As the tank battle raged
around Prokhorovka,

the thick black smoke from
countless burning vehicles
turned day into night.

Soviet losses were terrifying
more than 300 tanks in a single
day.

In the pulverising engagement,
neither side emerged as a clear
victor.

But the implications
for the Wehrmacht were obvious.

Paul Hausser, commander
of the 2nd SS panzer corps,

immediately began to withdraw
from Prokhorovka.

Operation Citadel had failed.
There had been no breakthrough.

That same day, two Soviet Fronts
launched an offensive against
the northern face

of the Kursk salient. The
operation was codenamed Kutuzov.

The goal of the operation was to
destroy German forces around
Orel,

including Model s Ninth Army,
leading the German offensive.

A powerful artillery bombardment
signalled the start of the
operation.

It was so effective that the
initial Soviet advance was
almost unopposed.

But as the advance continued,
the Germans began to fight back.

Model realised the threat. Units
engaged in the Kursk offensive

were hurriedly redeployed
to reinforce his defences.

He directed the Luftwaffe to
attack Soviet tank formations
advancing from the north.

The famous Stuka ace Hans-Ulrich
Rudel led the attack. He wrote:

My aircraft was armed with
antitank guns, other Junkers
armed with bombs followed me.

I destroyed four tanks in the
first attack. By that evening,
my score was up to 12.

To cover Model s retreat, German
pilots flew several sorties a
day.

Rudel s stuka was shot down near
the town of Bolkhov. He made a
forced landing,

but was back in the air in a
fresh aircraft two hours later.

The Soviets began to
repel our airborne

antitank attacks quite
successfully. He wrote.

This was because they learnt to
bring up their anti-aircraft
guns

alongside their lead tanks.

Soviet fighters were also in
action. It was over Kursk that
Ivan Kozhedub,

the Soviet Union s top-scoring
fighter ace, brought down his
first enemy aircraft.

Ivan Kozhedub was a triple Hero
of the Soviet Union by the age
of 25.

He wasn t shot down
once in the entire war.

He flew 330 missions and brought
down 64 enemy aircraft,
including one Me-262 jet.

It s rumoured that his victories
included two American P-51
Mustangs,

which had attacked his
unfamiliar aircraft in the
belief it was German.

Meanwhile down below, Soviet
tank reserves had arrived to
bolster the offensive.

Tanker Nikolay Zhelesnov was in
the thick of the fighting. He
recalled:

The German defences
on the outskirts of the village

consisted of antitank guns
and dug-in tanks.

I destroyed 2 guns and one
tank during this engagement.

I shot at it twice,
and it went dead.

It was due to our driver, not
me, that we crushed the two
guns.

I just told him over the tank
radio: Misha, to the right! A
gun! .

After we ran over its carriage,
I noticed another one about 10
metres away:

Crush the other one too, or it
will turn round and hit our
stern!

The Red Army failed to encircle
the German troops around Orel.

But Model was forced
into retreat.

Eventually he was able to
regroup and dig-in at the Rzhev
line.

By 5th August, the Red Army
had mopped up the last pockets

of German resistance in Orel.

Vatutin s assault against Army
Group South took much longer to
materialise.

It was a full three weeks
before the Voronezh Front

had regathered sufficient
strength. But on 3rd August,

Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev
was finally launched towards
Belgorod and Kharkov.

The SS panzer divisions had been
redeployed to the Donets Basin.

Therefore the German line
was considerably weakened.

Achieving a rapid breakthrough,
Katukov s 1st Tank Army

and Rotmistrov s 5th Guards Tank
Army advanced swiftly towards
their objectives.

On the third day of the
offensive, Red Army forces
liberated the city of Belgorod.

On 5th August, the roar of
guns was heard in Moscow.

The salutes, the first to be
fired in Russia s Great
Patriotic War,

honoured the liberators
of Orel and Belgorod.

The Soviet troops now advanced
on Kharkov. On the fourth day of
the operation,

lead units of Katukov s 1st Tank
Army broke into the town of
Bogodukhov,

and crossed the Poltava-Kharkov
railway branch.

It was there that they were hit
by von Manstein s counterattack.

He had scrambled together all
the reserves he could muster,

and thrown them into a desperate
battle to hold Kharkov.

The Soviet vanguard was forced
to fall back to Bogodukhov.

Meanwhile Konev s Steppe Front
was advancing directly on
Kharkov.

The Germans had turned
the city into a fortress.

A frontal attack
would be disastrous.

And so 5th Guards Tank Army was
ordered to make a flanking
manoeuvre,

to threaten Kharkov s defenders
with encriclement, and force
them to retreat.

But now Rotmistrov s old
friends , the SS Panzer
Divisions Das Reich and
Totenkopf,

returned from the south, and
immediately attacked near
Bogodukhov.

At one stage, General Rotmistrov
received two contradictory
orders

one from Vatutin, demanding,
he defend Bogodukhov,

another from Konev, demanding
his troops storm Kharkov.

It triggered a heated discussion
at Rotmistrov s headquarters

involving the army commander,
his chief of staff,

and the Military Council,
led by Major General Grishin.

You have to come to some
decision, sir , Grishin told
Rotmistrov.

To which he replied, I ve
decided to hold my positions
until the situation is clear.

But sir, we could be put on
trial and shot for this delay ,
Grishin said anxiously.

If we leave our positions and
the Germans capture Bogodukhov,

we will certainly be shot.

It would expose the entire left
flank of the Voronezh Front to
enemy attack.

Fortunately for him,
Rotmistrov s decision proved to
be the correct one.

His army played a crucial part
in repelling the German
counterattack around Bogodukhov.

Soon Rotmistrov s 5th Guards
Tank Army was also able to
support Konev s troops

by advancing on Kharkov
from the west.

The German s only line of
retreat was in imminent danger
of being cut off.

Hitler demanded that Manstein
hold Kharkov at all costs.

But this would mean the
encirclement of the whole of
Army Detachment Kempf.

Manstein was not prepared
to risk another Stalingrad.

On the afternoon of 22nd August,

Soviet air reconnaissance
reported that the Germans were
pulling out of Kharkov.

Konev launched an
immediate assault.

The city was liberated
by noon the following day.

It was a triumphant finale to
the Red Army s great victory at
Kursk.

General Guderian
wrote in his diary:

With the failure of the Citadel
offensive we suffered a decisive
defeat.

Needless to say, the Russians
exploited their victory to the
full.

There would be no respite
on the Eastern Front.

From now on, the enemy was in
undisputed possession of the
initiative.

Operation Citadel was the last
large-scale German offensive in
the East.

Now the Wehrmacht
began a long retreat.

In their wake, they left
a devastated country.

Hundreds of Russian and
Ukrainian villages were burnt to
the ground.

Crops were destroyed. Bridges
and railway stations were blown
up.

Any villagers capable of work
were shipped to Germany to be
used as forced labour.

The Soviet troops were
marching to liberate Ukraine.

Here, on the banks of the
Dnieper River, the war of
liberation would begin.